


rotten

by neverwinter (KingPreussen)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, Dispassionate Sex, Eating Disorders, Family Dynamics, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Self-Harm, Self-Worth Issues, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 08:29:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13027179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingPreussen/pseuds/neverwinter
Summary: me and my friend were digging in dirtme and my brother buried that boxlong enough ago to forget whenbut i remember what was insidewhat was inside was glistening silverseeing it tarnished still decayingand i remember when it left usand i remember when we found itrotten rudd - bibio





	rotten

**Author's Note:**

> i originally thought this idea would be part of another story. i decided to split it off
> 
> i considered complaining about my own dumb shit in the notes but no one wants to hear about it
> 
> a character study as much as id ever write one. append an asterisk to that tag

Taako always drove with his phone in his right hand.

A few months back, when he was still eating, there would be some kind of cheap breakfast sandwich in his left. Then it was a Starbucks venti iced coffee. Then it was a disposable water bottle. Currently he was on cigarettes, held between two yellowed fingers, ironically _more_ able to hold the wheel because of it.

Lup, who wasn't a worrier, worried. "You'll kill yourself doing that," she commented once, after he pulled up to her apartment to pick her up for monthly-catch-up dinner, in the middle of lighting a new cigarette with the butt of his old one. He just winked at her as he pushed the passenger door open from inside the car.

There wasn't ever anything interesting on the phone, either. He didn't talk to very many people nowadays. His sister, because she wouldn't let him isolate himself from her. Sometimes his old friends would text something inane, but it had been months since he responded. He wondered if they were doing it out of some sense of duty or if they were trying to make sure he wasn't dead. Or if those were the same thing.

Sometimes he stood at the mirror in his bedroom, phone in one hand, cigarette in the other, and studied himself. He would never be gaunt, he had the wrong build for that, but he was thinner. It made him frown with displeasure… but never enough to do anything about it.

* * *

Taako missed cooking. He cooked because he liked the process, and he liked eating. He liked cooking for other people.

"I'm tired of feeling like shit," he told Lup at dinner. Some restaurant he didn't know the name of. He wouldn't cook for these anymore.

She lowered her fork, looking at him with wide, dark eyes. She looked healthy. Taako remembered when he could look at her and see a mirror of himself.

Her eyes flickered from the empty place in front of him to the wine glass in his left hand and the phone in his right. "So what are you going to do about it?" she asked.

He smiled back at her, ignoring the pull in his chest that told him to go outside and have a cigarette, to stop talking. "Nothing," he replied breezily.

* * *

"What's the last meal you ate?" Lucretia asked. Somehow Lup had gotten the drop on him and snuck both herself and her girlfriend into his apartment while he was at work. Lucretia was much more prone to worrying than Lup.

Taako sat on his couch, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. "Does accidentally biting into a menthol count as a meal?" he ground out.

Lucretia sighed, as if she really gave a fuck about him. She was there because Lup asked her to be, and Lup had fucked off ten minutes ago. Neither of them were therapists and both were getting on Taako's nerves.

"Lup thinks you're trying to kill yourself, Taako." She said it as if she was waiting to be proven wrong.

"I _am_ trying to kill myself," he said. "I lack the courage of my fucking convictions."

When he looked up, Lucretia had shifted from her original position, standing over him like an unsmiling god. Now she was sitting on his coffee table in front of him. He could tell she was pitying him, and to be honest, it felt good.

She didn't touch him--when was the last time someone he knew touched him--but she was clenching and unclenching her right hand like she wanted to. Her right hand. Where was his phone?

"Don't starve yourself to death, at least," she finally said. He took a deep breath.

"I won't," he said.

* * *

When he had hobbies, Taako used to read romance novels. He couldn't write, not at _all_. The most creative thing he ever did was box braid Lup's hair for her once, and that had a set pattern and rules. Cooking was recipe driven; a robot could make a meal. Reading didn't require any personal input.

His favorite romance novels were the ones with "magical healing cock." The romantic lead would sweep whatever boring heroine off her feet and solve all her problems with some half-hearted eating out and missionary sex.

Taako had tried it, a few times. Not missionary, god no, but all the rest. Unfortunately he just ended up with a disappointing sex life and another person to pretend he gave a shit about for a few weeks.

His whole goddamn life was unfortunate, he thought to himself, phone on the bedside table and _not_ his right hand as… oh fuck, what was this dude's name? Taako wracked his brain, gripping the pillow beneath his head less out of pleasure and more out of reflex. He made sure to keep his mouth open so every time… fuck! What was his name!?

So every time _Fuck Man_ thrust into him, air was forced out of his lungs and sounded vaguely erotic. Maybe. Taako hadn't watched porn in a while so he wasn't really sure what counted as "erotic" anymore. He hadn't even touched his dick except to piss and wash, so.

Fuck Man finally came, pressing Taako uncomfortably to the bed on his stomach. He didn't complain, because Fuck Man routinely fell asleep thirty seconds after the fact, so there wouldn't be any questions about why Taako didn't come too. Forty five seconds later, Taako pushed Fuck Man onto his own side of the bed and gingerly stood up, grabbing his phone.

* * *

There weren't interventions in real life. At least, Taako was pretty sure there weren't. Or maybe there had to be more than one person that loved you to hold one.

He sat in his living room by himself, wishing for a fleeting, _burning_ second that he was surrounded by people that were "worried" about him, that wanted him to get "better." Then the second passed and he stood up to rush to the bathroom and throw up, leaving the television on behind him.

* * *

"Where do you get hard drugs?" He didn't know he had asked the question aloud until Lup snorted, sitting in the passenger seat of his car. They were going to pick up cigarettes and windshield wiper fluid, the two most important things in Taako's life, at the moment. Those two, as always, followed closely by the phone in his right hand.

" _Hard drugs_ ," she repeated in a dramatic, deep voice. " _Rated R. Is playing at:_ "

" _Taako's bloodstream_ ," he said in the same tone.

She laughed so hard she snorted again and Taako smirked, tapping the ash off of his cigarette out the window.

* * *

Fuck Man got dumped a day later. "Don't come back," Taako said in lieu of a proper farewell. Fuck Man just laughed at him, reached forward to grope him, and walked out.

Taako felt nauseous and disgusting for the rest of the week.

"Dumped Fuck Man," he said, for Lup's benefit. Outside of work, where he had minimal interaction anyway, she was the only person he talked to. He wished he could see her but she and Lucretia were away.

" _Good_ ," she replied. Her voice was muffled over the phone. " _Listen, baby, I have to go. We're already running late._ "

"Don't worry. Have fun." He hung up. Their conversation only lasted 20 seconds, according to his phone. He worried the edge of the metal with his thumb, still feeling like a thin film of dirt was surrounding him, on every inch of skin.

Maybe it was better Lup didn't see him.

He knew it was irrational to feel abandoned, and so he did.

* * *

As a child, Taako would cry at the drop of a hat. He didn't cry anymore. He felt close to crying every time his Newport box ran dry but that didn't really count.

He leaned back against the headboard of his bed. The mattress was bare, because he threw out the last sheets he and Fuck Man had fucked on. He considered tossing the mattress as well but knew he couldn't afford a replacement, and he wasn't at the point in his self-destructive spiral that he would consider sleeping on the floor.

The film of disgust wasn't going away.

"I should make a pizza," he said to himself. His phone wasn't with him, somewhere other than his right hand, so he couldn't call Lup. He had called her enough anyway. "I'm going to make a pizza, from scratch."

His cigarette didn't agree or disagree, but it did burn something fierce when he put it out on his bare thigh. He was _too thin_. He didn't like it.

* * *

Taako always drove with his phone in his right hand.

He tapped at the horn twice with the heel of his left, and then put his cigarette in his mouth to stick his middle finger up out of the window. The car that cut him off brake checked him and he half considered rear ending them on purpose. He didn't.

His phone lit up with another inane message from an old friend but his phone wasn't for inane messages. It was for being there, so Taako could always drive with his phone in his right hand.


End file.
